[OP-ED COLUMN ]

Rick Scott’s Strange Health Math

By Glenn Marston

Published: Sunday, July 22, 2012 at 12:01 a.m.

Last Modified: Saturday, July 21, 2012 at 11:32 p.m.

In his endless and too-often-fruitless effort to categorize every aspect of state government and assign it a numerical ranking, Gov. Rick Scott ordered the Florida Department of Health to create a system to score and rank the county health department in each of the state’s 67 counties.

The Tallahassee bureau of the Tampa Bay Times and The Miami Herald pushed the state Health Department, through a public-record request, for nearly five weeks before it divulged the spreadsheet containing the scores and ranks.

The Health Department said the report was completed in December but remains a work in progress, the Times and Herald reported Friday.

Scrambled eggs are more like it. The system is a crazy combination of subjective and unrelated categories, each of which is assigned a numerical grade and, when the incongruous items are added, reveals the county’s score. It’s like a magic trick. Really, it’s more like a practical joke.

Dr. Daniel Haight, director of the Polk County Health Department, was politic in comments Friday. His response was contained in a version of the article published in The Ledger on Saturday.

Polk ranked 54th among the 67 counties and received a score of 42 points out of a possible 69 points.

The best county was Indian River, with 58 points. The worst was Liberty County, with 23 points.

“This tool is a good start,” Haight said. “Folks will rank where they rank. Now is the opportunity for the tool to get feedback.”

The Polk County Health Department will evaluate the score, he said, and decide on changes for Polk County. The department also plans to give feedback about the system to the state, he said.

“The Health Department is always devoted to serving the community and protecting public health,” Haight said. “We’ve always gotten good feedback on individual programs.”

Speaking of individual programs, here’s a sample of the scattering of 25 categories scored by the new system:

<p>In his endless and too-often-fruitless effort to categorize every aspect of state government and assign it a numerical ranking, Gov. Rick Scott ordered the Florida Department of Health to create a system to score and rank the county health department in each of the state's 67 counties.</p><p>The Tallahassee bureau of the Tampa Bay Times and The Miami Herald pushed the state Health Department, through a public-record request, for nearly five weeks before it divulged the spreadsheet containing the scores and ranks.</p><p>The Health Department said the report was completed in December but remains a work in progress, the Times and Herald reported Friday.</p><p>Scrambled eggs are more like it. The system is a crazy combination of subjective and unrelated categories, each of which is assigned a numerical grade and, when the incongruous items are added, reveals the county's score. It's like a magic trick. Really, it's more like a practical joke.</p><p>Dr. Daniel Haight, director of the Polk County Health Department, was politic in comments Friday. His response was contained in a version of the article published in The Ledger on Saturday.</p><p>Polk ranked 54th among the 67 counties and received a score of 42 points out of a possible 69 points.</p><p>The best county was Indian River, with 58 points. The worst was Liberty County, with 23 points.</p><p>“This tool is a good start,” Haight said. “Folks will rank where they rank. Now is the opportunity for the tool to get feedback.”</p><p>The Polk County Health Department will evaluate the score, he said, and decide on changes for Polk County. The department also plans to give feedback about the system to the state, he said.</p><p>“The Health Department is always devoted to serving the community and protecting public health,” Haight said. “We've always gotten good feedback on individual programs.”</p><p>Speaking of individual programs, here's a sample of the scattering of 25 categories scored by the new system: </p><p>• Bacterial sexually transmitted disease rate in 15-to-24-year-olds.</p><p>• Active tuberculosis patients completing therapy within 12 months of initiation of treatment.</p><p>• Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children infants who are initially breast-fed.</p><p>• County health department programs conducting a customer-satisfaction process.</p><p>• Responses on all customer-satisfaction surveys with a satisfactory or better rating.</p><p>• Actual to planned revenue variance.</p><p>• Actual to planned expense variance.</p><p>• County health department response rate on the employee-satisfaction survey.</p><p>• Employees who rate their overall level of satisfaction as very satisfied or satisfied.</p><p>• Project Public Health-ready county health department.</p><p>• Employee-satisfaction survey — clarity dimension.</p><p>• Twelve-month average cash balance.</p><p>Make what you will of these eggs — scrambled or fried — but you will certainly not find a sunny side.</p><p>[ Glenn Marston is editorial page editor. E-mail: glenn.marston@theledger.com. Phone: 863-802-7600. ]</p>